Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK

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Xbox 360 Gets Short Shrift From UK Consumers

November 24, 2005

I read several articles about the launch of the much-hyped Xbox 360 in the US, with stores selling out hours after this week's midnight release of the new console. UK consumers have been warned that those who don't pre-order the console will be left disappointed. However, UK consumers don't seem panicked, just yet.

Hitwise Search Intelligence offers great insight into the popularity of various products and to forecast demand. A chart of searches for "psp", "xbox 360" and "nintendo ds" reveals that Sony's PSP is still the favourite among UK consumers. Searches for "psp" soared ahead of the console's launch but we have not seen this same surge ahead of the launch of the Xbox 360.

On the heels of the announcement that the Nintendo DS will be Wi-Fi enabled from 25th November, searches for "nintendo ds" nearly tripled last week. However, searches for "nintendo ds" remain far behind searches for "psp" and "xbox 360".

Hitwise rolled out some new search features this week. One of the really cool things the new features allow you to do is chart search term breadth, or the aggregated volume of searches for a keyword. I ran a search term breadth chart for the keywords "psp", "xbox" and "nintendo" and found that the aggregated volume of searches for "psp" and "xbox" are each 3 times higher than for the keyword "nintendo". "Psp" remains the most searched-for among the three.

If you are interested in using this new feature, choose "search term breadth" in the features when charting search terms.

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